


if you need me

by thesquirrel_alixncvna



Series: fishsticks and gunpowder [1]
Category: Black Widow Series - Margaret Stohl, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: + other characters but they're mentioned once, Ava Orlova angst, Gen, Ghosts, Hallucinations, I'm Bad At Summaries, I'm Bad At Tagging, Wakes & Funerals, does it?, quantum entanglement, that doesn't warrant a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:22:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26327068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesquirrel_alixncvna/pseuds/thesquirrel_alixncvna
Summary: Afterwards, when the audience had dissipated and mingling was acceptable, she drifted. She was looking out onto the water when that familiar sensation crawled up her neck. The sensation of a person’s presence. By now, she knew better than to hope they existed.Expecting it to be Alexei, the voice that did speak was a jolt to the system.“Is that my dress?”
Relationships: Ava Orlova & Natasha Romanov
Series: fishsticks and gunpowder [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138016
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	if you need me

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily inspired by a Tumblr post by violetwolfraven. Frankly, I just needed an excuse to write about/as Ava Orlova.
> 
> This story contains spoilers for the novels Black Widow: Forever Red and Black Widow: Red Vengeance.

The service was sombre.

Ava had wished for rain. If the world was crying, maybe she could have let herself join in. 

Alas, if not sunny, the afternoon was bright. Filtered through clouds and the leafy domes of trees, dappled windows of gold fluttered over the grass, shivering at the sporadic breaths of wind that sent leaves somersaulting upward, bolstered on the crest of the gust. Sometimes the emerald flickers settled on the surface of the lake like confetti, or flies in ointment. Mostly, they ran into the ground.

The amassed assembly of so many black suits and dark dresses, with their attached sorrowful expressions, gave the impression of one enormous shadow. Attendees bled back in order of...closeness, perhaps? Pepper (now Tony’s widow, she’d discovered) knelt next to their young daughter. Ava felt for the girl - she hadn’t been much older when she’d lost her own parents. Of course, she now knew it was closer to ‘given up for Ivan Somodorov’s experimentation by’ rather than ‘lost’. Mini Stark was lucky that way. 

_Everything is relative, Ava. No one is lucky to lose a father._ Thinking of her own losses made her bitter, which is why she didn’t, or tried not to, at least. Obviously, funerals weren’t the place for suppression, though.

Behind Pepper and Stark.2 stood a heavy man Ava recognised as Tony’s Head of Security, though she couldn’t recall the name. Beside him was War Machine, that she knew. Then Steve Rogers, a boy who looked about her age with a woman, his mother maybe? You couldn’t mistake Thor, even with the dreadlocks and weight gain, nor could you skip over the figure of (as far as she could tell) Bruce Banner crossed with his alter ego. But he was no surprise next to the blue cyborg, a talking raccoon and a talking tree. She recognised Hawkeye and the Wakandan attendees, Maria Hill, Carol Danvers (who she probably knew the best due to Dante’s involvement with the Alpha Flight space program) and even Nick Fury, blank and resolute on the porch.

Ava knew that like always, she stuck out like a sore thumb. A baggy mourning dress Natasha had lent her for her last all-black event - Alexei’s funeral - and the shot of red hair she couldn’t mute defined her as an outsider, and she behaved like one. Standing off to the side, not talking to anyone. Not that she knew anyone well enough to even participate in small talk. 

Clint Barton had looked like he'd been punched in the gut when she stepped in. Ava almost felt bad. With their matching red hair, green eyes and serious disposition, the similarities between the Widows had been jarring in life. With the loss so recent, she suspected her uncanny likeness to his best friend was like rubbing salt into a fresh wound. She should know. She feels it everyday, after just a glance in the mirror.

Clint had turned away immediately, eyes bright with pain. The figure Ava discerned to be his wife, Laura, a woman she’d heard of only thrice in Natasha’s passing conversations, managed a sympathetic half smile before following her husband, the sight obviously too much to bear. Ava appreciated the glance, but that barely registered against the sinking feeling of shame in her gut. Embarrassment that she was hurting these people by simply existing. She shrank further into the shadows.

Pepper recognised her, though. Maria offered a solemn nod, after mastering the flicker of what went over Clint, and Carol even the quietest grim greeting. But Tony’s memorial floated out on the lake, and Ava had never felt more alone.

Afterwards, when the audience had dissipated and mingling was acceptable, she drifted. She was looking out onto the water when that familiar sensation crawled up her neck. The sensation of a person’s presence. By now, she knew better than to hope they existed.

Expecting it to be Alexei, the voice that did speak was a jolt to the system.

“Is that my dress?”

Ava spun around to find the figment of her most recent dreams and nightmares materialised, as crisp and cocky as in real life. Natasha’s apparition was clad in her usual limbo between professional and casual, the amalgamation of the only items in her wardrobe that weren’t intended for infiltrating a Monte Carlo casino. Combat boots, dark trousers and a black leather jacket gave Ava a punch of nostalgia, a yearning for their time hunting the Alpha, or when Natasha would visit her at the Academy, and the rare coffee trips to the Stark Community Kitchen, dedicated in Alexei’s name. 

Ava didn’t try to reach for her. She knew she would be disappointed. 

_Just a memory._

“You look pretty good, for a corpse,” Ava managed.

The Scarlet Witch, wandering down to join Barton at the shore, gave her a strange look. Ava retreated further into the trees. She could feel, rather than hear, Natasha following her, like the vibrating of a string, perhaps the entanglement that knotted their minds. Was that longing in her wraith-of-a-companion’s eyes, when she regarded the sorceress?

“It must be hard. You know, they’re finally back, but this time it’s you that’s gone. Seeing them…” She tailed off, clearing her throat. Natasha’s expression was inscrutable, but not tight, or cold, and her gaze was firmly on Ava. It felt heavy.  
“They have each other.” A pause. “You have them too, _sestra_ , if you want. They were my family, as much as you and Alexei were, and I need you to know you’re not alone. You know that, right?”  
Ava shook her head, looking away from the assembly, away from Natasha, into the forest, down at the floor. “I am alone. I’m the same lost and scarred little girl you rescued from that Ukrainian warehouse, only this time with no one to save me and powers I can barely control. Oksana was barely back on her feet when…” That sentence didn’t need finishing. Ava let bitterness sew the fabric of her self-pity. “Dante’s helping her figure shit out, but it’s gonna take a while, and I don’t know…”  
“You don’t need saving, Ava,” Natasha said softly, in what she realised was a gentle tone. Caring. “You are strong, and you have options.”

_I don’t feel so strong without you._

“I’m so sick of losing people,” Ava struggled to hold back tears as the lump in her throat grew. “First Alexei, then you, and I just- I _miss_ you.”

A pause, and Natasha looked away, as if her next words were hard to say. “I missed you too, when you were dead. Tried to talk to you a few times, you know-” She tapped her head. “-through the link, but I never really worked it out, not like you. I didn’t know if you…” She shrugged. And though the words were left unsaid ( _Could you hear me?_ ), they struck an anamnesis. It was not so much a memory as the recollection of a feeling, a twanging at the edge of a purgatory consciousness. Whispered words, absent-minded confessions, the comfort that someone, somewhere could be listening.  
“I remember.” Ava realised, mastering herself. When they meet eyes again, hers are no longer glossy. “I- I heard you.”  
Something eased in Natasha’s expression, the sympathy not gone, and she smiled, despite her surprise.

“Talk to Clint. Talk to Wanda, and Sam. They’re hurting right now, but so are you. After everything I did with the Red Room, they accepted me, and they’ll do the same for you. This is your chance, Ava, to become the hero you’re meant to be. What was it you wanted?” Natasha cracked a smile. “A stronger, braver version of me? Less of a disappointment?” Ava conceded a sheepish grin from her morose face.  
“I’ll be lucky if I’m ever even compared to you, _sestra_.”

Natasha quirked her lip again, but there was a distance to it. Ava could feel the tether between their minds slackening, dragging along the floor.

“Will I see you again?”  
Natasha only smiled, that enigmatic smirk that used to infuriate Ava.  
“If you need me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are appreciated x


End file.
